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I suppose there are inevitably those for whom skin color means something other than pigmentation. But what can you do, there’ll be hateful idiots as long as the world exists. Apart from that, successful sports personalities who maintain a high public profile are often polarizing figures. Personally I love Hamilton the driver, but cringe at Hamilton the social media persona.

Besides the pathetically outdated (though unfortunately probably not outmoded) sexism, what strikes me is that Bernie may yet be even more cynical than this – I get the feeling that when he talks of showbusiness it’s not even so much for audiences, but for attracting yet more outlying petty kingdoms to give him mountains of cash to host a race. Mark my words, Bernie is rich enough to be gradually replacing failing vital organs with bio-technology – soon he will be an indestructible cyborg bent on ever more maniacal schemes to improve the show – his first decree shall be to mandate that the cars be fitted with sidecars carrying glamorous ladies who’ll giggle away while trackside sprinklers make them look even more shiny…

@geemac
Be that as it may, people are only human after all and everyone has their own lives to live. I certainly don’t buy the argument that just because you speak up once in a while it’s somehow hypocritical or less valid. What I’m after is to see whether people feel that Russia’s relationship with F1 is different than Bahrain’s.

Speaking of which…

@stephanief1990
I think that Putin is using the race precisely in the same way as the Bahrani rulers, the same way as China: it’s purely an international (and internal) PR exercise – it’s a stamp of approval. Russia may not have major demonstration crackdowns as we speak, but Putin runs a squarely autocratic regime and is simply more adept than many others at hiding his brand of repression – current case in point: the ‘unidentified self-defence militias’ patrolling Crimea.

Hey now, hold yer horses everybody. The exact thing he says is “I feel like everything happens for a reason”. Now, personally it’s one of my pet peeves when people say that, but I don’t think it’s at all insensitive. It’s just a way some people have of saying that they want to focus on what can be done positively now, rather than dwelling on the bad. Now, I may feel that the “things happen for a reason” thing is a back-asswards way of looking at causality on the world, but there’s no ill will in it. And besides, it’s hard to dispute that everything does happen because of identifiable reasons.

I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist – but I gotta say it’s not totally outside the probable universe, although neither is that double nose design, especially coming from Lotus. For one thing they would have found a novel way of getting air under the nose within the new regs. If it did turn out to be a bluff, I’d be extra impressed, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.

“One day, when the supply runs out, Bernie will likely fritter to dust on camera during a grid walk, but today it’s smiles all around as everyone celebrates his annual rejuvenating lunch of seven Spanish children’s souls. Says the octogenarian: ‘We all joke that it’s my annual-ritual-anti-burial. Har! No, but seriously, I like them with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”